


The Lightest Touch

by juliesioux



Series: Exploring the Future [11]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Breakup, F/M, Love, PTSD, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romantic Angst, Romantic Soulmates, Sex, Sexual Tension, Soulmates, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:53:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6246208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliesioux/pseuds/juliesioux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another one of my head canons where Oliver and Felicity have spend a few weeks apart due to Felicity's insistence. </p><p>One night the electrical wiring for the computers and servers goes  haywire and she gets an alert. Once she gets to the lair, she discovers an exhausted and wounded Oliver.<br/>This chance encounter is the beginning of their slow waltz back to one another.</p><p>All of this takes place between episodes 415 and 416 and will be 3 chapters of heartache but with a slice of pure physical joy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coming in Through the Fog

**Chapter One: Coming in Through the Fog**

_Wrapped in wings of dust_   
_She walks through time_   
_Seeking solace in space._

I  
Oliver

Oliver sat in his chair by his weapon workstation. He was exhausted from endless patrols and trying to track down Darhk. Days and days of searching and dying Ghosts. It was all a blur of violence and rain soaked nights. Rubbing his hands over his face, Oliver took a deep breath and considered heading off to shower and change.

He had brought dinner in earlier that night and just wanted to rinse off the sweat and grime of the night, eat and go to bed. He needed to rest if he was going to begin it all over tomorrow. His shoulders slumped under the weight of his own conscience as he contemplated another night alone.

Maybe tomorrow will be easier, he thought, maybe I won’t be so tired.

There was a sudden snap and sparks fell from the ceiling. Oliver froze and waited for a full minute to see if it would continue and he would be forced to contact Felicity for help. The system was overloading faster these days, even though new servers had been installed and all the hardware upgraded to some new Palmer Tech top secret classifications.

Luckily, the system held and no further pyrotechnics rained electric fire down on him. He was still uncertain about the state of the wiring but he trusted that Cisco and Felicity would figure it out. He decided to check on the computers in her area just in case something was on the fritz even though he had no idea how to fix them it couldn’t hurt to check.

Everything looked fine to his untrained eye but anything was possible in the mysterious depths of the hard drives and servers that connected all the computers to each other as well as to the rest of the team. He would get Diggle to call Felicity tomorrow. He would do it himself but she wasn’t always answering when he called.

With a sigh, he sat down in the closest chair to him and just stared. His ribs hurt and something under his leather vest felt wet. Oliver was suddenly depleted of all his energy and felt an overall sense of defeat that rooted him in place. He had spent the last three weeks trying to do everything and anything to heal his relationship with Felicity but she had firmly and gently kept him at bay.

She was the strongest person he had ever known and when it came to self-protection, she was the fiercest. Nothing could move her before she was ready and it only served to deepen his love and admiration for her. That well would never run dry no matter if they were together or not.

He was determined to not slip back into his old patterns. He had never known what love could do to a person. Felicity was reached into his heart and made herself at home and now he felt empty. It would have sent him a spiral in the past but now it lit a fire somewhere in the dark corners of his heart. He loved her with a passion that seemed borne out of time. It was connected to something bigger than either of them were and he resolved to not give up on either of them.

Just as he was thinking about getting up, he heard the soft swoosh of the elevator doors opening. It was late, after midnight at last check, and everyone had long since gone home. Maybe it was Thea, he speculated, she often dropped by at night to check up on him these days.

“Thea,” he called, “I am over here.”  
There was a long pause and it dawned on him that maybe it wasn’t Thea.  
“Um...it’s me, Oliver,” came Felicity’s voice from the shadows on the edge of the Lair.

Oliver froze. His impulse was to turn towards her and look, really look, at her. He could smell her perfume as it drifted over to him. It was the one she picked up in Bali on their last night on the island. He inhaled as deeply as he could to try and remember it for after she left. Steeling himself for her resistance, he turned towards her voice and waited.

“I have an alarm that lets me know when there is an...event with the computers,” she explained quietly, still remaining outside the central bank of computers in the grey shadows between the pillars, “I’ll just check the servers to make sure they aren’t fried.”

“Ok.” Oliver didn’t have the energy to say much more than that. Exhaustion from everything, the fighting, the emotional guilt, missing her, the helplessness of all of it, left him short of words and in a space of numbness. Anyone who heard him would assume that he just didn’t care that she was there but the exact opposite was true, he just didn’t have the energy to express how much it meant to him that she was.

He listened to her moving back and forth. Part of him was rejoicing in the fact that he was actually listening to her walk and pace between machines and another part fought down the weight of sadness in that she had used her first steps with the now perfectly working implant to walk away from him. He closed his eyes and focused on her steps, the swish of her skirt around her legs and the light click of her heels on the cold cement floor. Slowly, everything faded to a silent black and he relaxed into a deep sleep.

In his dream, he was adrift on a lake in a canoe lost in a sea of fog. Echoing off the slices of waterlogged air, he heard her voice calling his name and without hesitation he dove into the water and swam towards her.

 

II  
Felicity

Felicity got the alert as she was leaving Palmer Tech for the night. With another board meeting coming up, she and Curtis were putting the finishing touches on another presentation revolving around her new idea and his invention. She wanted to revolutionize spinal cord research and wanted to make sure the technology could keep up with the inventions and ideas that were going to be necessary in the very near future.

But the team was important to her and they wouldn’t be safe if something went wrong with the computers and servers in the Lair which were still so touchy. Touchy and explosive. Especially now that they were continually running at capacity. She had made plans with Cisco to upgrade the wiring but life had gone off the rails for them both. Regardless, she would have to go and check things out to make sure the computers were still working.

Well, on the plus side no one will be there, she thought as she entered the hidden elevator inside Oliver’s old office, the place will be empty and quiet.

The doors opened and she looked around into the darkened space. She was momentarily saddened. She was hoping to see someone milling about after the end of the night’s patrols. It has been a few weeks since she had been with the team down here and she missed it.

No, that wasn’t true. She missed him and that realization was like a fist hitting her in the gut but she knew she needed just a little more time alone. She was bruised and battered by his choices and needed to make sure her spirit was healed before making any attempt at healing with him.

Just as she stepped out and felt the gentle breeze of the elevator doors closing, she heard his voice call out from the centre of the computer bank, her special place in the Lair. He thought she was Thea. Felicity knew she was checked in on her brother from time to time. Their bond was so strong, how could she not?

Once he knew it was her, he fell silent. Felicity busied herself between server banks and the computers. Everything seemed to be in working order. The wiring was in desperate need of repair and replacement if they were going to keep running at this capacity. She needed Cisco to help with the entire project. The earliest they could do it would be May and that seemed like an aeon away.

She had done all she could and decided to tell Oliver that it should hold until morning and that she would try to increase their server capacity so that it would stop popping circuits. She walked past his arrow and weapons station and saw that he was still sitting at her bank of computers, in her chair no less, and was strangely still.

She approached him carefully and quietly so as not to startle him awake, something she learned to do a long time ago while they were still living together, and saw that his breathing was slow and deep. Oliver, still in his Green Arrow suit, was sound asleep with his head resting on the headrest.

Standing a few paces away from him, Felicity called to him, she urged him to wake him up.

“Oliver,” she called softly, “Oliver, you need to wake up now.”  
“Mmmmhmmm,” came his nonverbal response.  
“Nope, no passive agreement, you need to get out of your suit and to your room to sleep.”

She listened to Oliver’s breathing even out. He had slipped back to sleep while she was talking to him. Felicity quietly knelt down and called to him again, this time she reached out to touch him lightly on the knee.

He reacted quick as a cat, so fast that she didn’t even see his hand moved. In the blink of an eye, he caught hold of her wrist and, when she thought that he might treat her like a Ghost, he gently brought her arm up and tenderly kissed the inside of her wrist. It was a habit he had gotten into in the mornings to wake her up and it always worked. Now, it was like he was on automatic and was doing it from that secret part of his memory where longing and comfort were leading him back to her.

For a moment she lost herself to the softness of his lips, the bristle of his stubble and the warmth of his breath across her skin. A warmth flooded through her and she felt as though she lived a lifetime in that small, tender moment when his lips touched her sensitive skin.

Slowly, she pulled her arm away and felt a coldness settle in her bones. She wasn’t sure what she was more afraid of now: them never finding their way back to each other or finding their way back only to find themselves irreparably broken and wondering what the point of all of this was.

“Oliver, come on, wake up,” she urged.

His eyelids fluttered and he woke up with a sigh. His shoulders slumped and he grunted an acknowledgement to her. She had never seen him so exhausted that he couldn’t even speak. Regardless of the state of their relationship, she still worried about him, about how he was doing and the chances he was taking in finding Darhk and the rest of HIVE.

“Oliver, you need to take better care of yourself.”  
“I am fine, Felicity. Tonight was just a long one.”  
“True but added to all the other long ones and you have an unbroken event. You aren’t a metahuman, you need real rest.”

Exasperated, Oliver slapped his knees and got up with a noticeable wince. Felicity caught the wince and narrowed her eyes. He was trying to hide an injury from her in order to get her to leave.

“Fine. I’ll shower, eat and then sleep until tomorrow.”  
“You are injured,” she said matter-of-factly, “Take off your vest and let me look. I can patch you up and then be on my way.”

Oliver looked at her and nodded. He headed over to the medical bay area and started to undo his leather vest. She watched his hands shake from fatigue and her heart grew heavy. She knew he wasn’t sleeping. Diggle and Thea, in their misguided but honestly felt attempts at fixing the damage Oliver had created, were keeping her well informed. He was numb, stunned, and lost in a state of helplessness were she was concerned and she knew it because she was in the same space without him.

Closing that part of her heart off, she quickly got the first aid kit out. He was holding his ribs so it might just be an easy tape up job. But it was when he lifted his shirt to check his ribs that they both saw the four inch long gash on his side that was bleeding freely.

“Oliver! How did you not know that has happened!?” She exclaimed in shock and concern.  
“I don’t know. I was a bit preoccupied trying not to get killed.”  
“You look really pale. How much blood have you lost? You know how much I hate needles. I don’t know how to get one of those large ones in veins so if you need blood, I’m going to have to call Dig to come and help. He can get those things in no problem. You just need to tell me, ok? I can’t tell as I am not a doctor -” Oliver reached out and touched her lightly on the cheek.

Felicity stopped talking and looked up into his eyes. He was smiling gently at her and for a moment she leaned just a little bit into his hand.

“I’ll be fine,” he said softly, “I just need to clean it and bandage it up.”  
“Ok,” she said as she pulled away, “I’ll get some sterile water and some washcloths.”

Her cheek felt like it was on fire from where he had just had his hand. It felt so familiar, so comforting, so perfect. Felicity just needed to get him fixed up and into the shower room so she could go home. Her hands shook slightly so she took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders and calmed her heart. She felt like she was holding her universe together in the palm of her hand and the weight of it was consuming her heart and soul.

“Ok, sit up on the table,” she said, “let’s see if I can get that cleaned up.”

Oliver leaned back and slowly raised himself up. He was getting paler by the minute and Felicity’s alarm bells were going off. Exhaustion and blood loss were not a good mix and if he passed out, she didn’t know what she would do. Thinking quickly, she grabbed an energy drink from the fridge and made him drink half of it before she started. When his colour improved, as gently as she could, she cleaned up his wound and began patching him up.

“Luckily, it isn’t deep. It looks like it maybe a ricochet. It definitely is a bullet pathway. I’d say you got lucky tonight, OIiver.”  
“Yeah, I guess I did,” he said wearily.  
“You need to rest. Just get out of your suit and wash up. I’ll get your dinner ready and leave it for you in your room.”

Without warning, Oliver leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. It was just something that came so naturally that she didn’t resist. Closing her eyes, she spent a moment just feeling his breath on her face and the feel of his skin pressed into hers. She could feel that familiar heat beginning to build between them and a slow, delicious warmth spreading through her body. It would be so easy to just shrug off the events of three weeks ago and let their bodies take over.

Gently, Felicity straightened up and took a small step away from him. She watched his shoulders fall and all the breath leave his body. He was mourning her and she was only two feet away.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”  
“I can manage on my own.”  
“Are you sure? You still look a little pale…”  
“I’ll be fine,” Oliver said as he got unsteadily to his feet, “Goodnight, Felicity.”  
“Ok,” she said quietly as he walked away from her, “Goodnight, Oliver.”

 

What are we going to do? She wondered later as she stood on the loft’s balcony with her arms wrapped around herself. What are we going to do? We are dissolving into nothingness the longer we are separated.

With a heavy sigh, Felicity wandered up to her bedroom and crawled into bed. Sleep did not come easily for her as she replayed the late night’s events over and over in her head. Soon, when the sun crested the edge of the earth, she sought out the light and began her day.


	2. Landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity and Oliver make a small but important step back to one another in this chapter.  
> This is a slow burn chapter that peels back another layer in the complexity of relationships and forgiveness.
> 
> This is totally my head canon. I know the show will move slower than this but forgiveness comes in all shaped and sizes. This is just another interpretation of it.

**Chapter Two: Landing**

_A gentle baptism_   
_With a flutter of wings_   
_Two souls take flight._

I  
Oliver

Oliver awoke slowly like he was surfacing through dark waters. He heard muffled thuds and the occasional quiet laughs of Diggle and Thea as they moved around the training space in the Lair. His head was pounding, so he remained motionless in the almost too small bed they had in the living quarters. It was comfortable but his head brushed the headboard and his feet were almost off the end of the bed.

Maybe we can upgrade this to a king sized bed and I can lay crosswise, he thought, the room is big enough to manage it. Hell, we have that enormous overstuffed couch across the room, we can fit a bigger bed in here if we get rid of it.

He rolled over, attempted to sit up and the combined pain in his ribs and head pushed him back onto the bed. Waves of nausea rolled through him and he closed his eye and waited for the surge to pass. In the cool, darkened room, Oliver drifted through the fog of fatigue. Exhausted from his week long push to finally locate HIVE’s nerve centre had taken its toll on his body, he gave in to its demands and slept.

A series of loud clangs from the Lair an untold number of hours later pulled him back to the living world. Groggily, he sat up and waited to see what his body was telling him. His head no longer hurt but his ribs, especially where the flesh wound was, were a mass of hot, roiling agony. He could barely move his right arm without sharp stabs and a soft grinding that told him at least one rib was cracked.

By the time Oliver had put on a pair of sweatpants, he was covered in a film of cold, clammy sweat. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this decimated by injuries, not even falling off the mountain felt like this from what he could remember. Even drinking water was painful.

With as deep a sigh as he could manage, Oliver zipped up his hoodie, opened the door and saw no one. Puzzled, he slowly walked into the Lair, looked around and still saw no one. Something or someone had made that sound but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out who or what.

“Goddamnit!” Came a muffled shout from somewhere near the servers.

Oliver couldn’t place the voice. It was female but so muffled it could be Thea, Laurel or Felicity.

“Hello?” He called back.  
“Oliver?”  
“Felicity? Where are you?”  
“Under the last bank of servers.”  
“Why?”  
“Don’t you remember last night and the shower of electric sparks?”  
“Yes, but that doesn’t explain why you are under the servers when the wiring is what is the problem.”

When she said nothing in return, he quietly chuckled. He could sense she was most likely swearing at him under her breath. When it came to failing technology, Felicity was as relentless in trying to find the cause as she was impatient with anyone asking questions. He sat down with a weary sigh and waited for her to join him.

“You look terrible, Oliver,” she said with real concern in her voice as she came towards him, “Let me look at the bullet wound and your ribs.”  
“It’s just a flesh wound, Felicity, I’m fine.”  
“Knock it off and let me look.”

She stepped into the lights that surrounded the bank of computers and all he could do was stare. Her hair was out of place and falling out of the hair elastic and she had dust and grime all over her dress as well as smudges under her eyes. He suspected she had been under the servers for quite some time, given the state of her appearance, but the light in the lair seemed to pour over her, like she was drenched in it, making her glow with a soft white aura.

With a small smile, he nodded and unzipped his hoodie so she could see. It was only then that he truly saw the massive black and blue bruise that covered almost half of his torso with the four inch long gouge layered on top. He was stunned and looked up at Felicity with wide eyes. For her part, she arranged her expression so that it was neutral and slowly helped him to his feet.

“Oliver, how do you feel?” She asked carefully.  
“Like I’ve been hit by a truck.”  
“Were you?”  
“No,” he softly chuckled.  
“Can you breathe ok?”  
“Yeah, this will fine,” he said quietly. He was watching her and how she was studying his injury. He wanted to feel the heat of her hand on his torso but she was careful to not touch the tender bruise on his body. She was standing so close he could smell her perfume and the conditioner she used on her hair. Soft coconut and something slightly spicy, like sandalwood, surrounded her.

His chest ached as he watched her and he felt his throat grow thick with approaching tears. He loved her with an intensity that threatened to push him apart. It was loosening the thick seams of his scars and pulsing with memories and all the future promises he wanted to make to her.

Her hand hovered above his right side and he could feel the heat as it vibrated and sparked with enough energy to power the city for a year. The ache in his chest tightened and he lost himself to the smell of her skin and the way she blazed with life.

“Oliver,” she said in a soft, tremulous voice, “I think it’s just cracked and really badly bruised.”  
“Yeah, it looks worse than it feels,” he lied, “Where is everyone? What...time is it?”  
“It’s just after 11.”  
“11? I’ve haven’t slept that long since I was in one of the colleges I got kicked out of,” he chuckled carefully as he zipped up his hoodie.  
“Oliver...it is 11 PM.”

He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. There was deep concern in her eyes and it stopped him cold. She wasn’t kidding. He had slept for almost 24 hours straight without once waking up. He broke his gaze away from hers and made his way to the small kitchen beside the medical bay. It unsettled him that he had been out of action for an entire night. Truth be told, the drive to find HIVE was the only thing keeping him sane.

“I left a note on your door telling everyone to leave you alone. You needed to rest,” she called after him, “Thea and I took turns checking on you throughout the day.”  
“You did?” He asked, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice.  
“Yes,” she answered softly, “You were not in good shape, Oliver. I wanted to take you to the hospital but...you are really hard to move.”

Oliver laughed softly. He had no doubt that he probably fell into a semi-comatose state as soon as his head hit the pillow. He was surprised that she kept an eye on him though. Considering the lengths she had gone to in order to avoid him the last three weeks, it eased the anxiety he was feeling about his injury to know that she was there with him. But this particular injury hurt with a deep, bone splitting intensity. Layering a bullet ricochet on top of a cracked rib was not something he ever wanted to do again.

“I guess my body was telling me to stop.”  
“Oliver, you are not impervious.”  
“I know, Felicity.”  
“I am serious, Oliver. You are taking too many risks trying to track down the rest of Darhk’s operation. We will find them and stop them but…” she trailed off, suddenly at a loss for words.  
“But what?”  
“But...it isn’t worth it if we lose you.”  
“You’ll never lose me, Felicity,” he said with a small shake of his head.  
“Oliver -”  
“No, Felicity, let me finish,” he said quickly but gently, “I’ve been waiting three weeks for a chance...just a chance that we might have a moment alone.”  
“Oliver...I wasn’t ready to have that conversation with you. I needed that time...for me.”  
“I know and I understand why. I...am hoping maybe we can take some time now or soon...”  
“Oliver, you can’t just stomp your feet and expect that I will just…,” she started to say before trailing off with a suddenly focused look in her eyes, “...Ok.”  
“R..really?” He asked in complete surprise. He had expected her to firmly decline the offer and send him on his way.

Felicity laughed softly and the sound of it rolled over him like a wave, washing the hurt and pain of the last 24 hours away. She was a tender mercy, a soft touch in the night to calm his heart and his soul. He could only smile back at her and try not to lose himself in the depths of her eyes.

“Yes,” she gently smiled, “But first, I need to finish trying to figure out where the surges in power are coming from and you...you need to eat something and go back to bed.”  
“I’m not all that tired but I am hungry.”  
“After you take both of these,” she said, holding out her hand with two white pills in the centre, “you will need to lie down.”  
“Felicity, you know how I feel about pills.”  
“Do you want to get a staph infection?” She asked matter-of-factly.  
“...fine,” he reluctantly agreed and took the pills from her hand.

Twenty minutes later, after a sandwich and shower, Oliver stumbled back to the sleeping quarters he was calling home for the time being. He was surprised to see that Felicity had come in to change the sheets and had also brought in a thick, new duvet to replace the thin woolen one that was normally on the bed. He felt overwhelmed by a cascading sadness as he looked at how she was taking care of him. He wanted to go find her and wrap her in a long embrace but instead, stripped down and crawled into bed.

He could hear her in the larger room outside talking quietly to the computers. She did that when she thought she was alone or forgot that there were other people in the room. It was comforting, like a sacred song, as he closed his eyes and listened to her quietly admonishing their computer system, he soon slipped back to sleep. Her voice lead him into a dreamless void, guiding him like a beacon of light.

 

II  
Felicity

Felicity returned to the servers in the far corner of the Lair in an attempt to fix what she thought might be the problem causing the surges that were causing the lightning storms at the worst possible moments. She was only half paying attention to what she was doing. If she was honest with herself, she was only here to keep an eye on Oliver. That bruise had unsettled her. It was black and blue and so swollen. She could feel the heat of it pouring out of him which made her think something else might be wrong.

Maybe Dig should look at it, she thought, he has more field hospital experience than I do and can tell if there is anything we should really be worried about even if he has been stabbed through the chest and thrown off a mountain and survived.

She had been unable to concentrate at work knowing he was wounded and alone. Thea had checked in on him every few hours and reported back that he was fine, his breathing wasn’t laboured or ragged and he moved every now and then.

It didn’t alleviate her concern though. She had nursed him through worse but that was before the events of three weeks ago when she felt the firm, but gentle, subconscious push in the centre of her being. He had fallen into an old habit, one that had plagued him since he stepped back onto Starling soil. He withheld information and made a life altering decision only this time, instead of turning to her for support, he deliberately kept her in the dark.

The hurt of that still had the power to deflate her, leaving her hollowed out and brittle around the edges. Three weeks had taken the edge off but the pain was still so tightly wound around her heart, she just wasn’t sure what to do, not just yet.

The soft whirl of the servers was hypnotic. It allowed her mind to drift and subconsciously sort through all the layers of hurt and what was because of Oliver and what was not. The reappearance of her father had rattled her to her bones and shook loose feelings and memories she had thought long since forgotten.

She had made the executive decision to give everyone a much needed day and night off. The team was exhausted and the city was as calm as it ever was going to be and Oliver’s injury had rattled them. They had never seen him that...defeated. Not even with Ra’s before he had handed his life over to an uncertain fate.

Felicity felt like she was at a fork in the road but with no idea which path to take. Her heart was battered and bruised and she felt adrift, lost in a foggy wasteland where the shore was distant echo. She could see him but his features were lost in the reflecting air. She knew, through it all, that he was her anchor but still she struggled to keep herself from drowning.

With a weary sigh, she sat up and reattached the back panel of the server. She had no idea if what she was doing was going to stop the power surges but it wouldn’t hurt. It was when she stood up and turned around that she caught sight of herself in the reflective surface of the cases that held the suits.

“Holy crap!” She exclaimed.

She looked like she had rolled around in a giant grease pit. Her hair was half in, half out of her hair elastic, she was covered in dust and had grease smudges everywhere. She wanted to check on Oliver and make sure he was sleeping but she felt grimy and covered in whatever dust bunnies were under the servers.

“Whatever is wrong with you, I will figure it out,” she admonished her computer system, “because this bullcrap. There is no way this should be happening.”

Quietly, she made her way past the sleeping quarters and into the shower room. She had a change of clothes in her bag and desperately needed to freshen up. She was pretty sure her deoderant had failed her and she was fantasizing about how the hot water would feel showering down over her. Maybe she could scrye her future in the shower floor and hand over her free will to hidden power. Laughing at herself, she stripped down and stepped under the hot, cleansing water.

The shower did more than that for her. Somewhere between rinsing the shampoo out of her hair and applying her conditioner, Felicity felt the loosening of something deep within her and it pushed her a part. It clawed its way out of her body, tearing loose the unstable foundation she had been relying on to get her through the night.

Holding her face to cascading water, Felicity let her tears flow out of her. She silently railed at Oliver for withholding from her the reality of his son and for shutting her out of the way forward. She was more angry than hurt when she found out, but when the hurt came it was like a steamroller. It flattened her, numbed her out and turned the world around her two dimensional and colourless.

There was only one question left for her to answer and as she untangled the hurt from the love and tried to ease the pain that squeezed her heart, which had left bruises and welts in its wake, she watched the path to it come into view. It would just take courage, as much as she could muster, to take that first step and get on with the journey.

As she dried herself off and got dressed, Felicity continued to pull at the ends of the threads that kept her locked away in a self-constructed cocoon. She could feel herself coming back to life as she sorted through the hurt, she felt her chest fill with air as the pressure from it lessened and left her body.

How she was going to complete this journey was a mystery to her but it involved Oliver no matter what and since he was determined to talk with her maybe, just maybe, they could figure it out together.

Taking a deep breath, she reached behind her and gently felt the small scar on the base of her spine where they had put the implant. It was healed but she always afraid something would happen and it would have to come out. So just in case, at least once a day, she let her fingertips run over the scar as a reminder that it was still inside her body.

Looking down, she located the bullet wound scar that necessitated that tiny bit of technology Curtis created to get her standing again. She rarely touched it or the 6 inch surgical scar that accompanied it. She still had nightmares about shattering glass, gunshots and masked men. She remembers the scent of her own blood and then the blackness, the void of time and space, that had descended on her like a blanket.

She had yet to tell Oliver about what she saw on the other side of consciousness, she wasn’t sure she actually believed it or if it was just her mind filling in the blank hours where she wasn’t conscious. Either way, her unconscious world kept her alive when her body was trying to leave her behind. Once this was done, she would dive into those memories and try to figure out what kept her holding onto life with such a firm grasp.

Throwing her dirty clothes into a bag, Felicity pulled on clean gym clothes and a hoodie that was actually Oliver’s and walked down to the living quarters. The door was partly open but the interior was dark. Quietly, Felicity opened the door just a little bit and peeked in. All she could hear was Oliver’s deep, steady breathing.

“Oliver?” She called softly, “Are you awake?”

Getting no response, she felt a combination of relief and disappointment. Even though one of the pills she made him take was an Oxycontin, she had thought he would have palmed it and faked taking it to appease her. He’d done it before and he knew it drove her nuts but this time, he listened.

With a gentle smile, she crossed over to check on him, stooping to pick up his discarded clothes along the way. She paused briefly when she got to his boxer briefs, he had literally stripped down to nothing before getting into bed. A small but intense flutter started in her belly, it didn’t last long but it blew through her like a hurricane, leaving her breathless.

Pulling the duvet up around his shoulders, she took a moment to look at him as he slept. His face always relaxed when he was asleep and he looked so young, so unmarked. She often wondered who he would be today if not for Lian Yu and all the horrors it brought to him. Would they have met at Queen Inc? Would they have found each other in some ill fated IT Department request? Fallen in love? Or would they have traveled on journeys and paths so divergent that they never crossed?

He was slightly feverish to the touch which worried her so she picked up the woolen blanket that used to be on the bed and curled up on the couch across from him. It didn’t feel right to leave him alone if he was developing an infection or if something else bad happened while he slept. The couch was comfortable, the room was cool and she was exhausted. Sleep came quickly when she closed her eyes and, in the quiet pre-dawn hours when the colour of night deepened in an attempt to fend off the coming of the sun, their breathing joined and became one.


	3. Journey's End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The FINAL chapter in this short tale. Oliver and Felicity have a long over due conversation but really it is an opportunity for Felicity to say all that she needs to say.
> 
> This is totally my head canon as the show will not go anywhere near as smoothly as this lol  
> But it ends in a short but sweetly hot moment because Oliver is a man of action and Felicity communicates with words.
> 
> (We need to see some make up sexy times)

Chapter Three: Journey’s End

One forgives to the degree that one loves.  
**Francois de La Rochefoucauld**

I  
Oliver

 

Oliver awoke slowly. His body returned to wakefulness, dragging his mind with it like an afterthought. He kept trying to sink down and return to that quiet, fog filled landscape where he could float free, letting his mind dissolve and his thoughts drift away to leave him in peace. He rarely got those moments and tried to hold onto them with as tight a grasp as his subconscious would allow.

He pulled the duvet up around his shoulders, careful not to move his right arm too much just yet, and sighed as deeply as he could. He felt looser, like the muscles around his torso had let go of the violent damage inflicted on it, and were less raw as a result. Felicity had given him something to relax his body and that allowed the healing to begin. She always knew what he needed even when he didn’t or thought he did but was way off the mark.

Buried under the featherlight but incredibly warm duvet, Oliver slowly opened his eyes and let them adjust to the darkness in the room. It was almost completely pitch black except for the soft glow of a phone across the room from him. It puzzled him because he was sure his phone was out in the Lair. He had a vague memory of plugging it in at Felicity’s work station before heading to the shower.

Slowly and with great care, he still wasn’t sure how far his injury’s healing had progressed or how long he had slept, he sat up and let the world settle beneath his feet. He spent a few minutes just feeling the floor with his toes, pushing his feet flat on the cold concrete. He loved being barefoot and exploring the world with the tough skin on the bottom of his feet.

He felt around with his feet for his discarded clothes from the night before. He had taken off his sweat pants, hoodie and underwear in stages as he had walked towards the bed but now they weren’t where he left them. Getting out of bed, he carefully felt the floor to no avail. It was then that he heard the soft, even breathing coming from the couch.

The glow of the phone’s screen illuminated Felicity’s hair just enough for him to see. She was buried under the woolen blanket on the enormous couch she had insisted on buying. Instinctively, he reached out to smooth her hair away from her face but stopped himself mere inches from her face. He felt a flutter low in his belly, a soft movement that re-ignited a fire in his blood he hadn’t felt since their time in Bali. It coursed through his veins and pushed the breath from his body.

Remembering that he was, in fact, completely nude, Oliver took a few stumbling steps back to his bed and sat down. He had just enough time to wrap the duvet around him when she stirred and with a small gasp, slowly woke up. He still had no idea where his clothes were and his body was not behaving enough for him to stand up and try to find them.

“Oliver?” she mumbled, “Are you awake?”  
“Yeah,” he chuckled, “I don’t sleep sit. Or do I?”  
“Hmmmmno,” she murmured, “Thought I was dreaming.”  
“No,” he said softly, “No, you are awake.”  
“Are you ok? How do your ribs feel?”  
“Tender but better. What did you give me last night? A mega dose antibiotic?”  
“Yes?”  
“Felicity…”  
“Yeah, ok, it was something from Palmer Pharmaceuticals. I’ve had it on hand in case someone got hurt but not badly enough to need a hospital. You qualified. You were hurt, Oliver, you were hurt bad but you refused to go to the hospital and then yesterday that bullet wound was slowly getting infected and I knew you would resist and not let us help you so I did what I had to do to make sure I...we didn’t lose you to a staph infection.”

Oliver sat and looked at her from his small bed. Her eyes were bright and focused and even in the soft blue light he could see true concern and panic on her face. He had to physically stop himself from going to her, to show her that he was ok, that the pain was almost gone and that he would survive. He could hear the fear in her voice, no matter how hard she was trying to hide it, he could hear it and it almost broke him.

“Felicity,” he said softly, “I promise you, I wasn’t doing anything foolish. I was ambushed by 3 Ghosts. I made it out alive because...because I wasn’t fighting to die.”  
“I know,” she said quietly.  
“Now, what exactly was in that pill. I know what the other one was.”

Felicity got up slowly and crossed to where he was sitting bringing her phone with her. Switching it over to flashlight mode, she reached to lower the duvet from where he had wrapped it around his body. Oliver felt his body stiffen when her hand briefly came into contact with his skin with the lightest of touches. It sucked the air from his lungs in an audible whoosh. He knew she heard but was pretending she hadn’t. He closed his eyes and breathed through the desire to grab her hand and simply hold it.

Carefully he moved his right arm so that she could see the state of his injury. It no longer hurt to raise his arm and he could take deep breaths without that blinding pain in his side. He looked down at Felicity as she studied the bullet wound and bruise. Or rather the space where the bruise used to be as it was almost completely healed. Only a yellowish tinge was left where yesterday there had been a swollen, black and blue roiling mass of pain.

“Felicity, what was in that pill?” he asked with just a hint of iron in his voice.  
“Biodegradable nanites,” she said in her smallest voice.  
“WHAT?”  
“I know! I’m sorry! But you wouldn’t have agreed! Oliver...I was sure you had internal bleeding. I was...scared,” she finished softly, “The nanites won’t stay in your body. I promise. They are gone in 12 hours but they speed up the healing process by aiding in regenerating cells and then they flush out of your body in your breath.”  
“Felicity, I appreciate the thought behind this but...you can’t use me as a guinea pig.”  
“I know,” she sighed. “But you slept for 21 hours and were no better for it. Oliver, I was terrified.”

Instinctively, he reached out and laced his fingers through hers. It always helped to ground her if she could feel the warmth of his body. To further soothe her, he lightly ran his thumb over the tops of her knuckles. It was an unconscious action that began long before they started their intimate relationship. Her hands were so small but help such power. It was all he could do to not raise them both to his lips in supplication.

“I know I was injured, Felicity, and I know it was bad,” he said quietly, “and I appreciate that you were worried...no, terrified...but just give me a heads up in the future, ok?”  
“Ok. But you have to be honest about how injured you are. You NEVER are. I know it isn’t about pride but you know that the injuries you walk through are ones that could put some men in the ground.”  
“I know,” he said somberly, “I sometimes forget.”

Oliver felt a subtle shift in the air that surrounded them. A sudden charge crackled and rolled over them in delicate, almost effervescent waves of electricity. He felt his breathing deepen just enough to cause his chest to swell. Every part of him was tuned into her and there was nothing he could do to stop the fire that coursed through his veins. He was powerless where she was concerned.

“Maybe we should turn on a light,” she said quietly.  
“My eyes are still a little sensitive from the headache,” he lied because if she turned on the light, she would see his very real, very hard erection, “could we leave them off for a bit?”  
“Do you still have a headache? Do you want some aspirin? Real aspirin this time,” she hurriedly said, “not the fake out nanite kind.”  
Laughing softly, Oliver said, “No, it’s gone now. Just a little residual light sensitivity.”  
“So maybe now we should have that talk.”  
“Could I get a glass of water first?”

Leaning to her left, Felicity picked up a glass of water she had left on his bedside table the night before. Oliver once again marvelled at the care she was taking of him despite the events of the past month. He had to somehow convey through actions that he understood her point. That he was different if she would only give him a chance to truly show her that he wasn’t just trying anymore. He was actively doing.

“Can I start?” she asked.

 

II  
Felicity

She had been dreaming about Bali. About the chaotic but gentle love making she and Oliver had had throughout the night. In her dream, she was watching him as he got out of the tub built for four in the master bath. She was entranced by the way the water slid over the seams of his scars. How the water would pool momentarily before it spilled over like a waterfall and rushed down the planes and slopes of his heavily muscled chest and abdomen.

In her dream, she watches the path the droplets take as they run down his naked body. Over his hips, the his inner thighs, and finally to his feet. The water pebbled and slowly dried as she watched. He was like a bronzed God that night and she could not get enough of him, his body, and the way he touched her.

Something shifted in the dying moments of her dream. A figure in black suddenly appeared, taking them both by surprise, and a shot rang out. Oliver turned towards her and in the place of water, blood flowed down his body. Coating him, staining his skin as the air filled with the scent of copper and iron. He was reaching for her when she pushed herself awake with a shallow gasp for breath.

Some mornings were harder than others, she thought aimlessly in those timeless seconds where reality and the dreamscape untangled from each other and went their separate ways before meeting again in the darkest hours of the night.

And now, a few short minutes after that abrupt re-entrance into reality, she was sitting beside the man she loved feeling like an exposed nerve next to a coil of electricity. She could feel the bed vibrating with the tension of three silent weeks and knew it was time for her to speak.

“You’re ok with me going first? Really? Even though you wanted to talk to me?” she was delaying and they both knew it.  
“Please,” he said with a dramatic sweeping gesture with his free hand, “the floor is yours.”  
“I may regret this,” she mused.  
“Nah,” he said quietly, “I think it feels right.”  
“Ok,” she said taking a deep breath, “here goes nothing, I guess…”  
“Do you want a glass of water first?”  
“No,” she laughed before growing more serious and quiet, “I’m ok. So...first off, I meant it when I said I got it, that I understood why you made your decisions regarding William and I know you are trying to do things differently.”  
“I am. Felicity…,” he stumbled briefly, “I am sorry. I just…”

Felicity let him search for the words she knew he was grasping for so hard that she could feel the struggle reverberating through his skin. He was desperate and terrified but still so aware of how she was feeling and thinking that she was moved by his constant state of emotional vigilance. He was trying with every part of himself to show that he understood her.

“Oliver,” she said as she turned to face him, “I’ve asked myself a lot of questions over the past three weeks. I’ve asked myself what I would do if I made this separation permanent, if I left the team, if I returned to Palmer Tech’s penthouse suite and never left.”

Oliver remained silent but she felt him stiffen slightly when she spoke about leaving him for good. His face was impassive in the faint light of her cell phone’s screen but she could see the turmoil, the guilt and the ever present longing rolling under his skin. What was coming next would be harder for him to hear but he needed to hear where her heart took her in her darkest moments alone.

“I asked myself how much hurt can my heart take before it is so scarred and hardened that it shuts down,” she said softly but with purpose as it was just as hard for her to say as it was for him to hear, “I needed to look at what would be best for me regardless of how much I love you. If not being with you was what was best for me, I had to think about that as a permanent solution.”

She heard a small hitch in his breathing but still he remained silent and still.

“Oliver, I asked myself what would it mean to not have you in my life, what it would mean to not forgive you and to move on with my life,” her voice grew soft and tender as she spoke her final thoughts, “and I realized last night that I can forgive you but not because I am better off with you or I am somehow a lesser person without you. None of things are even remotely true.”

Oliver let a soft chuckle slip past his lips so she knew she still had his full attention.

“No,” she said softly, “I can forgive you because if I don’t then I lose you and that feels like I am surrendering a piece of my heart up for death. Love means forgiveness but for me it also heals, it is our path forward and I am mindful that we both have broken bits and pieces that need healing and attention. Oliver, I can’t imagine my life without you in it, I can’t imagine loving anyone else other than you.”

Felicity lifted her eyes from their joined hands and looked at Oliver. It was then that she saw the single tear that slowly coursed over his cheek. He was struggling with something and knowing Oliver it was the disbelief that he was worthy of her forgiveness. It was always that, she thought, he still struggled with feeling worthy of her.

“Oliver?” she probed after another minute had gone by, “Are you ok?”  
“When did you get so philosophical and wise?”  
“I’ve always been light years ahead of you in the philosophical department.”  
“Felicity, I asked all those questions, too...I promise you, I will not repeat my mistakes.”  
“It’s ok if you do, Oliver.”  
“What?” he asked in surprise.  
“I know you will do your best but we are both creatures of habit, just different habits. I have my own issues to deal with thanks to daddy dearest and I can’t take those out on you.”  
“You weren’t.”  
“I kinda was...just a little bit. That whole ‘Why aren’t I good enough?’ kind of thinking.”

Oliver turned to look at her in concerned surprise. “You can’t...you...did I...why?”  
“Slow down,” she laughed, “it’s ok. I know better than to go down that road. How my father made me feel as a child is not your responsibility or fault.”  
“But those feelings resurfaced in connection to how I treated you after I found out…”

Felicity reached up and turned his face towards her, forcing him to look at her. When he could hold her gaze, she continued speaking. “There are always going to be artefacts from our past that resurface from time to time. We just need to be honest with each other and inclusive. Secrets can’t be allowed to force us apart ever again. Or, at least, they can’t be allowed to keep us apart for long.”

He smiled at her then and lit up her world like the sun.

“Now, can you tell me why you have a death grip on the duvet? Are you afraid it is going to blow away?”  
“Not exactly…”

Before she could ask him why he was being so evasive he leaned down and kissed her. It was a tender, searching kiss full of all the words he hadn’t found to say and all the love he had for her. She snaked her arms around his neck and pulled him closer to her, nudging his lips open with the tip of her tongue, tracing the shape of his lips until she felt the rumble of his moan before she heard it.

She felt his hands tangle in her hair and deepened the kiss, losing herself to the way his velvet tongue wrap around hers and how his nails scratched lightly over her scalp and down her back. She broke away to catch her breath and felt his lips on her neck. He always knew just where her pulse points were and how best to make her heart rate increase by gently nuzzling them.

The duvet slipped and that’s when she knew why he had been holding it so tightly around his body.

“Oliver,” she murmured, “is that why…?”  
“I got up to check on you and…”

She stood up to remove her track pants and shirt and then just smiled as she stood looking down at him. “Are we going to fit on this bed?”  
“If I have to move the couch over for extra surface area, I will do it.”

Felicity stepped closer to him and could once again feel that electric current that seemed to sizzle and snap between them. Three weeks was a long time and the desire she had for him was burning through her like a wildfire. She reached for him as he reached for her and she fell into his embrace.

For a moment, they held onto one another, growing familiar once again with each other’s skin and heartbeats. Felicity closed her eyes and reveled in the feel of his breath rushing over her breasts.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered against the top of his head.  
In answer, Oliver turned his head and she felt his lips and tongue gently brush over first one nipple and then the other. Instinctively, she pressed her body closer to his and was rewarded with the feel of his hand between her legs and his fingers, finding her ready for him, slowly pushing into her tight entrance. He began a slow, gentle rhythm that edged her close to the precipice but not over it.

“Oh God, Oliver,” she gasped as she tightened her hold on him, “go slow…”  
“I love you, Felicity,” he murmured as he raised his head, “I promise I will never exclude you again.”

“Lie back,” she murmured against his lips, “your ribs are still kinda bruised and I doubt either of us has any real ability to last very long.”

Oliver did as he was told, never once taking his eyes off of her. She straddled his hips and slowly rubbed herself up and down his hard length. His breathing was growing shorter and his grip on her hips intensified. Slowly, she lifted herself just a few inches, felt the head of his cock press against her and with one smooth, satiny push, she welcomed him into her body.

She moved slowly, in a sinuous, circular grinding motion. She was taking care not to jostle him or put too much pressure on his torso because she wasn’t sure just how hurt he still was. It was also the only way she was going to last longer than a minute or two, especially if he kept up the circular, pulsing manipulation of her clit as she ground down against him. She could feel him starting to swell and throb inside with every movement of their bodies.

“Felicity,” he gasped as he traced the contours of her hips with his fingertips, “I am so close…”  
“I know, just hold...on…,” her voice trailed off as she felt that intense, uncoiling flex start in her lower pelvis. She could feel herself tighten around him, locking onto him as wave after wave of pleasure rolled over her, threatening to sweep her away. She distantly heard her own voice calling out his name. After a few gentle thrusts, she felt him swell inside her and then a pulsing warmth as he found his way to his own release.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.  
Before she could ask why, she felt his thumb once again moving against her clit and felt the heat building in her blood with just a few simple strokes. His cock was still hard inside her and her body once again locked on to him in a series of pulsing, shuddering, grinding thrusts.

Felicity came again in a powerful, soul shattering rush. She felt like her consciousness was scattered across time and space, shattered as Oliver coaxed her body, mind and soul into a space of pure ecstasy. She heard him calling her back to her body, calling her home to him, and she could think of no other place she would rather be.

As gently as she could, she lowered herself down beside him as he pulled the duvet up over them. Eventually, they would get up and shower, maybe explore the bounds of their bodies under the hot, cascading water, but for now sleeping in a tangle of limbs on a too small bed was a small slice of heaven that neither of them was willing to part company with. For now, the day could begin without them.


End file.
